INTERFACE
Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
REVIEW
Michael Samuels: Childstar
Rokeby, London
16 May – 20 June
Reviewed by: Alex Pearl
I am reading The Portrait of Dorian Gray at the moment. It was only £2 and printed by Penguin in a wonderfully retro style. It s probably designed for single men to read in cafés.
In the preface Wilde writes, “The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless”.
Michael Samuels’ show ‘Childstar’ is beautiful. In a way I am frustrated, the sculptures are made from those colourful Formica-topped tables of a sort that I would like to have in my house. My gran had one, so there is a nostalgic pull to buy my own but I never see a suitable one when I am in the mood. This is probably because Samuels has a warehouse full of them somewhere. Using a restrained language of stacking, drilling, slicing, clamping and lighting he has produced a series of monuments to visual pleasure, each piece is carefully lit and often inlaid with the colourful surface of another table, I can see why he has been described as a painter.
Downstairs things are less monumental and even more playful. One pale yellow table is under-lit with blue LEDs and has a series of blue arrows running continuously along slots cut into its surface. I am slightly worried that I find this so attractive even though similar lighting under a GTI or on the front of a church would produce an entirely different reaction.
As I leave I think I’d love to own one. They look like they might come as a hideously complicated flat-pack and I would want to stack bills on them or push my CDs into the finely cut slots.
Rokeby has all the best shows.
www.rokebygallery.com
Writer detail:
Alex Pearl, www.rotagavin.blogspot.com
Venue detail:
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